Health benefits valuation of regulatory intervention for air pollution control in thermal power plants in Delhi,India

This study estimates minimum marginal health benefits (morbidity reduction only) of air pollution control and total health benefits arising from regulatory intervention regarding the adoption of the World Bank emission guidelines (WBEG) for thermal power plants (TPPs) in Delhi. The Industrial Source Complex-Short-Term Version–3 (ISCST3) model has been used to estimate the contribution to air pollution from TPPs. The household health production function (avertive behaviour) has been used to value health benefits of air pollution control. The study revealed that the ambient air pollution due to TPPs is reduced by between 62.17% to 83.45% by adopting the WBEG. Annual marginal benefit due to reduction in exposure to air pollution by 1 μg m^?3 is estimated to be US$0.353 per person. Total annual health benefits for adopting the WBEG for TPPs are estimated at US$235.19 million. This study provides a novel methodology to evaluate health benefits of regulatory intervention.     

Influence of Building Density and Roof Shape on the Wind and Dispersion Characteristics in an Urban Area: A Numerical Study

The Computational Fluid Dynamics code CFX-TASCflow is used for simulating the wind flow and pollutant concentration patterns in two-dimensional wind-tunnel models of an urban area. Several two-dimensional multiple street canyon configurations are studied corresponding to different areal densities and roof shapes. A line source of a tracer gas is placed at the bottom of one street canyon for modelling street-level traffic emissions. The flow fields resulting from the simulations correspond to the patterns observed in street canyons. In particular and in good agreement with observations, a dual vortex system is predicted for a deep flat-roof street canyon configuration, while an even more complex vortex system is evidenced in the case of slanted-roof square street canyons. In agreement with measurement data, high pollutant concentration levels are predicted either on the leeward or the windward side of the street canyon, depending on the geometrical details of the surrounding buildings.     

Physical Modeling of Emissions from Naturally Ventilated Underground Parking Garages

The dispersion of pollutants from naturally ventilated underground parking garages has been studied in a boundary layer wind tunnel. Two idealized model setups have been analysed, one was simulating pollutant dispersion around an isolated rectangular building and one was representing dispersion in a finite array of idealized building blocks. Flow and dispersion close to modelled ground level emission sources was measured. The results illustrate the complexity of the flow around buildings and provide insight in pollutant transport from ground level sources located directly on building surfaces. As a result, areas critical with respect to high pollutant concentrations could be visualized. Particularly, the results show high concentration gradients on the surface of the buildings equipped with modelled emission sources. Inside the boundary layers on the building walls, a significant amount of pollutants is transported to upwind locations on the surface of the building. The paper documents the potential of physical modelling to be used for the simulation and measurement of dispersion close to emission sources and within complex building arrangements.     

Modelling Tracer Dispersion from Landfills

Several wind tunnel experiments of tracer dispersion from reduced-scale landfill models are presented in this paper. Different experimental set-ups, hot-wire anemometry, particle image velocimetry and tracer concentration measurements were used for the characterisation of flow and dispersion phenomena nearby the models. The main aim of these experiments is to build an extensive experimental data set useful for model validation purposes. To demonstrate the potentiality of the experimental data set, a validation exercise on several mathematical models was performed by means of a statistical technique. The experiments highlighted an increase in pollutant ground level concentrations immediately downwind from the landfill because of induced turbulence and mean flow deflection. This phenomenon turns out to be predominant for the dispersion process. Tests with a different set-up showed an important dependence of the dispersion phenomena from the landfill height and highlighted how complex orographic conditions downwind of the landfill do not affect significantly the dispersion behaviour. Validation exercises were useful for model calibration, improving code reliability, as well as evaluating performances. The Van Ulden model proved to give the most encouraging results.     

Extension of the EUROS Integrated Air Quality Model to Fine Particulate Matter by Coupling to CACM/MADRID 2

The European Operational Smog (EUROS) integrated air quality modelling system has been extended to model fine particulate matter (PM). From an extended literature study, the Caltech Atmospheric Chemistry Mechanism and the Model of Aerosol Dynamics, Reaction, Ionisation and Dissolution were selected and recently coupled to EUROS. Currently, modelling of mass and chemical composition of aerosols in two size fractions (PM_2.5 and PM_10–2.5) is possible. The chemical composition is expressed in terms of seven components: ammonium, nitrate, sulphate, elementary carbon, primary inorganic compounds, primary organic compounds and secondary organic compounds. Calculated PM₁₀ concentrations and chemical composition are presented for two summer months of the year 2003 (1 July to 31 August).     

Oil spill cleanup cost estimation—Developing a mathematical model for marine environment

The field of oil spill cost modelling is not as well explored as desirable. Generally speaking, the existing models have either low accuracy, in that their predictions are far from the real cost, or low applicability, in that they are only valid under very specific conditions; such as in one particular country. This work strives to construct a model that is functional in a global scope and still possess a high level of accuracy. The resulting attempt is in many ways superior to the publicly available competitors, not only because of its predictive capacity but also because the model is quick to use, and its input variables should be readily available to any informed user. The model is more accurate comparing with similar available models. However, further study is needed to modify it to obtain more realistic results.     

Three-Dimensional Modelling of Concentration Fluctuations in Complicated Geometry

The strong fluctuating component in the measured concentration time series of a dispersing gaseous pollutant in the atmospheric boundary layer, and the hazard level associated to short-term concentration levels, demonstrate the necessity of calculating the magnitude of turbulent fluctuations of concentration using computational simulation models. Moreover the computation of concentration fluctuations in cases of dispersion in realistic situations, such as built-up areas or street canyons, is of special practical interest for hazard assessment purposes. In this paper, the formulation and evaluation of a model for concentration fluctuations, based on a transport equation, are presented. The model is applicable in cases of complex geometry. It is included in the framework of a computational code, developed for simulating the dispersion of buoyant pollutants over complex geometries. The experimental data used for the model evaluation concerned the dispersion of a passive gas in a street canyon between 4 identical rectangular buildings performed in a wind tunnel. The experimental concentration fluctuations data have been derived from measured high frequency concentrations. The concentration fluctuations model is evaluated by comparing the model's predictions with the observations in the form of scatter plots, quantile-quantile plots, contour plots and statistical indices as the fractional bias, the geometrical mean variance and the factor-of-two percentage. From the above comparisons it is concluded that the overall model performance in the present complex geometry case is satisfactory. The discrepancies between model predictions and observations are attributed to inaccuracies in prescribing the actual wind tunnel boundary conditions to the computational code.     

Monod kinetics rather than a first-order degradation model explains atrazine fate in soil mini-columns: Implications for pesticide fate modelling

Pesticide transport models commonly assume first-order pesticide degradation kinetics for describing reactive transport in soil. This assumption was assessed in mini-column studies with associated batch degradation tests. Soil mini-columns were irrigated with atrazine in two intermittent steps of about 30 days separated by 161 days application of artificial rain water. Atrazine concentration in the effluent peaked to that of the influent concentration after initial break-through but sharply decreased while influx was sustained, suggesting a degradation lag phase. The same pattern was displayed in the second step but peak height and percentage of atrazine recovered in the effluent were lower. A Monod model with biomass decay was successfully calibrated to this data. The model was successfully evaluated against batch degradation data and mini-column experiments at lower flow rate. The study suggested that first-order degradation models may underestimate risk of pesticide leaching if the pesticide degradation potential needs amplification during degradation.     

Inferring chemical effects on carbon flows in aquatic food webs: Methodology and case study

The majority of ecotoxicological enclosure experiments monitor species abundances at different chemical concentrations. Here, we present a new modelling approach that estimates changes in food web flows from such data and show that population- and food web level effects are revealed that are not apparent from abundance data alone. For the case of cypermethrin in freshwater enclosures, photosynthesis and excretion (d⁻¹) of phytoplankton at 3.643 μg L⁻¹ cypermethrin were 30% lower and 100% higher than in the control, respectively. The ingestion rate of mesozooplankton (d⁻¹) was 6 times higher in the treated enclosures than in the control as food concentration increased with insecticide exposure. With increasing cypermethrin concentrations, nanoflagellates progressively relied on phytoplankton as their main food source, which rendered the food web less stable. We conclude that this tool has excellent potential to analyse the wealth of enclosure data as it only needs species abundance and general constraints.     

The contribution of ship emissions to air pollution in the North Sea regions

As a consequence of the global distribution of manufacturing sites and the increasing international division of labour, ship traffic is steadily increasing and is becoming more and more important as an origin of air pollution.This study investigates the impact of ship emissions in coastal areas of the North Sea under conditions of the year 2000 by means of a regional chemistry transport model which runs on a sufficiently high resolution to study air pollution in coastal regions. It was found that northern Germany and Denmark in summer suffer from more than 50% higher sulphate, nitrate and ammonium aerosol concentrations due to contributions from ships. The implementation of a sulphur emission control area (SECA) in the North Sea, as it was implemented at the end of 2007, directly results in reduced sulphur dioxide and sulphate aerosol concentrations while nitrate aerosol concentrations are slightly increased.